‘Tight Wallets’ Derail $120 Million in Rail Funds for S.D. County : Prop. 156: After $1-billion statewide measure is rejected, officials look to decide which projects will be scaled back or abandoned.

Surprised and disappointed San Diego County transit officials Wednesday blamed anxiety over the economy and anger toward government spending for the defeat of Proposition 156, which would have given the county $120 million for rail transit projects.

Californians rejected the $1-billion statewide bond measure by 52% to 48% in Tuesday’s election, forcing officials in Sacramento to begin examining which transit projects will have to be scaled back, delayed or killed.

In San Diego County, 429,643 voters opposed Proposition 156 and 385,259 favored it.

“The mood was ‘no’ toward a lot of things perceived as government spending,” said Betty Laurs, marketing director for the North County Transit District.

The election setback won’t stop district plans to inaugurate an Oceanside-San Diego commuter rail service and an Oceanside-Escondido light rail, but the projects might be scaled back at first.

For example, light rail stations at the new CSU San Marcos campus and North County Fair in Escondido might have to wait, and the commuter rail line might have fewer passenger cars when it starts running in late 1994.

Other projects, including the Mission Valley and Mid-Coast extensions of the San Diego Trolley might be delayed, said Craig Scott, manager of transportation finance for the Assn. of San Diego Governments.

“It’s going to take a little while to sort out,” Scott said.

Officials were stunned by Proposition 156’s fizzle, especially because voters eagerly embraced a $1-billion transit bond measure two years ago. And there was only token organized opposition to the latest measure.

“Wallets are tight, that’s the reason it failed,” said Virginia Cartwright, chairwoman of the newly formed Transit Reform Coalition. The group has fought a proposed commuter rail station in Encinitas.

Beyond rail projects, California voters’ rejection of Proposition 156 prompted a far-reaching restructuring of the state’s transportation improvement program.

Highway projects will slow or halt because the Legislature has mandated that state transportation projects be divided according to complicated fund-sharing formulas.

Los Angeles and other cities that want rail lines were to get most of the rail-bond money, leaving larger shares of other state transportation funds for rural and suburban areas. Without the bonds, large amounts of remaining funds will have to be shifted back to cities.

As a result, state officials warned, hundreds of millions of dollars may be siphoned from highway-construction in rural and suburban areas, primarily in northern and central California, to complete rail-transit projects in Los Angeles County and the Bay Area.

While some of these transportation projects might be canceled outright and others allowed to proceed as planned, most are likely to simply be postponed--some indefinitely, state officials said.

At a California Transportation Commission meeting in Sacramento, Chairman Ken Kevorkian pledged Wednesday to find ways to soften the impact on the state’s transportation program.

“We are not planning to cut any project right now. We’re trying to keep our commitment to build all of them,” he said in a telephone interview. “How we are going to do that, I don’t know.”

Kevorkian said the commission, which set priorities for state transportation projects, will meet in the next few weeks with the state Department of Transportation and local transportation agencies to decide how to cope with the lack of new money.

Before the election, the state commission released a list of projects that it said would be “subject to re-evaluation” if Proposition 156 was not approved.

The biggest Southern California highway project threatened by the defeat of Proposition 156 is the Route 30 freeway between La Verne and San Bernardino--the long-awaited third alternative into Los Angeles County from the booming Inland Empire.

Other major projects on the endangered list include car pool lanes on Interstate 5 north of the “Orange Crush” interchange; widening of Route 60 in Riverside County; and nine projects to widen and otherwise improve U.S. 101 in Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties.